In recent years, following the spread of mobile telephones provided with a program execution function, various types of application programs, such as schedulers and games, for example, have been provided for mobile phones. Users of such mobile phones can now select application programs that meet their individual needs, and install the selected application programs on their mobile phones.
With mobile phones provided with a program execution function, predetermined unique information (hereinafter, basic information) about application programs installed thereon, such as the names and types of application programs, is generally displayed as a list and the user allowed to select an application program to be run. Here, it is useful to be able to display information that has been added or updated (hereinafter, detailed information) following use of each application program, such as the usage history of the application program.
Because detailed information as mentioned above is generally generated in the process of executing an application program, to enable the display of detailed information, the application program needs to be run whenever a display instruction is performed. However, since the CPU (Central Processing Unit) of a mobile phone having a program execution function has low performance compared with the CPU of a personal computer or the like, a long time is required for the application program to finish startup, and it may not be possible to perform display of detailed information quickly.
Various techniques for speeding up information display have already been proposed, an example of which includes a technique disclosed in JP-A-2005-198039. In JP-A-2005-198039, a technique is disclosed for shortening the required processing time leading up to display, by reading out and readying other image data from storage means in accordance with a prescribed order of priority, while one piece of image data is being displayed.